“What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he was to me, as yet remains unsaid”

This morning’s Metro announces “closure” with a picture of the American president hugging a 9/11 widow. Closure. Barack Obama lays a wreath on the site of the World Trade Centre. CNN’s terrorism analyst, Peter Bergen, declares an end to the War on Terrorism. Closure. Not ‘mission accomplished’. America’s softly-spoken nemesis is buried quietly at sea. Ten years of turmoil, hurt, blood, dreams and tears end with a whimper, not a bang. Closure, remember?

Yet how much room there is for memory in the creeping sliver of sunshine. Like that other great monster that has haunted the American imagination, Moby Dick, Osama Bin Laden, in the eyes of many, took America down with him. Friends – including Sheikh Tantawi of Al-Azhar in Cairo and Sheikh Qardawi – both of whom condemned Al-Qaeda after 9/11 – rapidly became enemies, issuing fatwas against American forces in Iraq. Elsewhere in the world, the same voices that declared “we are all Americans now” began to echo the unease that rapidly spread around the world as the great global Ahab cried “Havoc!”

This clash of utopias was limited initially to a cosmic battle between good and evil in the minds of a few intellectuals, the neoconservatives, and mirrored by their counterparts, the equally utopian and modern jihadis. After the relative lull of the ‘end of history’ – another preposterous claim composed with a mish-mash of Hegelian prophecy and discarded Christian hopes – history re-announced itself noisily into the 21st century.

When Al-Qaeda struck nearly a decade ago, the neocons saw their chance and in their pursuit of dreams, slowly awakened nightmares in the American consciousness. An image was built of this loose group of militants as being a highly-organised international cartel, perfectly described (and subsequently debunked) by Jason Burke: “a fantastically powerful network comprising thousands of trained and motivated men, watching and waiting in every city, in every country, on every continent, ready to carry out the orders of their leader, Osama bin Laden, and kill and maim for their cause”.

In the ten years that have since elapsed, despite the copious amounts of misinformation, echo effects and confused pseudo-analyses, certain facts about Al-Qaeda have come to light. As the likes of Scott Atran and Marc Sageman have shown, Al-Qaeda is now an entirely different phenomena: spontaneously self-organising, self-radicalising groups of young men (the attribution of gender is made advisedly) that have little or no contact with the old Al-Qaeda leadership. A ‘Leaderless Jihad’, the title of Sageman’s book. As Burke writes, this new threat is “far more dangerous than any single terrorist leader with an army…Instead, the threat that faces us is new and different, complex and diverse, dynamic and protean and profoundly difficult to characterise”.

The great whale was certainly real, but its whiteness was in large part a construction: a confabulation that exhumed our worst fears – a backward, “medieval” vanguard, frothing with fury and a thirst for blood – and some of the West’s biggest dreams – a universal civilisation based on liberal tenets and free markets. To misquote Bertrand Russell (on a completely unrelated issue), it has begun to seem that Al-Qaeda (or rather, ‘Al-Qaeda’), like the Cheshire Cat, is becoming gradually diaphanous until nothing of it is left but the grin, caused, presumably, by amusement at those who still think it is there.

Osama’s death will do little to end the bitterness and rage that exists out there. Though bin Laden’s ilk have been largely marginalised in the Middle East revolutions this year (see below), resentment still glows and hurt still prevails.

Let those who take comfort from this year’s events do as they can, but to hope Bin Laden’s death solves anything would be an illusion too far.

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Links

As expected, there have been a mass of articles and opinion pieces on the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Here are a few of the most brilliant and penetrating analyses that have been released. This page will be updated as better analyses emerge.

Geoffrey Robertson, QC, one of the world’s leading human rights lawyers argues that Bin Laden should have been captured and put in prison, adding that “Killing bin Laden gave him the consummation he most devoutly wished – fast-track to paradise. His belief system required him to die, mid-Jihad, from a bullet -not of old age on a prison farm in upstate New York”. However, the liberal blogger and Atlantic Monthly staff writer Matt Yglesias begs to differ with Robertson.

What would Jesus do? It’s a pertinent question considering Americans have such statements as “in god we trust” on their money and “So help me God” at the end of the Presidential oath and use statements such as “God bless American”. I know we have “god save the Queen” in our national anthem but I believe most of us say it with a bit Tongue-in-cheek. Americans follow a brand of Christianity that is alien to us as is the brand of Islam Osama follows is alien to many Muslims.

The world is a better place with a dead Osama Bin Laden, it’s hard to deny that. But it’s hard for me to understand how executing a man without a trial equates to justice and closure.

I’m not a Christian, I’m an atheist, but grown up in a Christian country and was taunt about compassion and forgiveness. I know the Bible contains passages about revenge and there are passages in Leviticus justifying slavery but they glossed over that in my RE class and for good reason. It seems that those passages are rather more popular in America.

This highlights the remarkable peace process in Northern Ireland were we let convicted terrorist, who had murdered people, out of prison in the name of peace, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Either one side has to obliterate the other, like in Sri Lanka, or one side has to offer the olive branch like we did in Northern Ireland. I think we know which route the Americans are taking.